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We all need a Minister of Happiness!

I’m glad we live in a world where more than one country has a Minister of State for Happiness.

Ohood Al Roumi, Minister of State for Happiness in the United Arab Emirates.

In contrast, the absence of a reasonable level of happiness means that all of our striving would ultimately prove to be in vain. It would be an unsustainable world where people spend their entire lives ‘fighting the good fight’ only to receive little or no reward at retirement and at points along the way towards retirement.

Why Hope (for happiness)? = Why Try? + Why Work?

Workers in the former Soviet Union used a phrase to illustrate this point; “As long as they pretend to pay us, we will pretend to work.”

And so, due to a lack of national happiness (caused by economic hardship) eventually the whole corporation formerly known as the USSR, collapsed.

The example of the former Soviet Union should serve as a warning to leaders of every country that the final and most profound metric for human beings is happiness — everything from worker productivity, to corporate profit, to the ambient level of law and order throughout a given society, to the success of our entire civilization — all of this hinges on the happiness metric.

So far, only Bhutan with their decades-old Gross National Happiness (GNH) index, the UAE, Venezuela, and the United Nations have given this profound societal element any serious consideration.

We employ ‘reverse engineering’ to our study of (all states of) matter in the universe, to the study of time, and to the study of the various lifeforms on this planet — shouldn’t it follow that we use reverse engineering to study and measure the societies and cultures within our civilization?

By ‘working it back’ regardless of the (pro tempore) results, Bhutan, the UAE, Venezuela, and the Indian state of Madhya Pradesh gain a huge and ongoing advantage by exploiting the data from the most profound human metric of all — Happiness!

Isn’t it interesting that the ‘Happiest Nations’ also lead the world in so many categories, including productivity, per capita income, the arts and sciences, and quality of life.

Bonus Graphic:

Social Progress Index 2015. Click on the image to visit the Social Progress Imperative website.